Borras Et Al. - 2013 - The Challenge of Global Governance of Land Grabbin

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The Challenge of Global Governance of LandGrabbing: Changing International AgriculturalContext and Competing Political Views andStrategiesSaturnino M. Borras Jr. a , Jennifer C. Franco b & Chunyu Wang ca International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, the Netherlandsb Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlandsc China Agricultural University, Beijing, ChinaVersion of record first published: 15 Feb 2013.

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The Challenge of Global Governance of Land Grabbing:

Changing International Agricultural Context and Competing

Political Views and Strategies

SATURNINO M. BORRAS JR∗, JENNIFER C. FRANCO∗∗ &CHUNYU WANG∗∗∗

∗International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, the Netherlands∗∗Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands∗∗∗China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

ABSTRACT The emergence of ‘flex crops and commodities’ within a fluid international food

regime transition, the rise of BRICS and middle-income countries, and the revalued role of

nation-states are critical context for land grabbing. These global transformations that shape

and are reshaped by contemporary land grabbing have resulted in the emergence of

competing interpretations of the meaning of such changes, making the already complex

governance terrain even more complicated. We are witnessing a three-way political

contestation at the global level to control the character, pace, and trajectory of discourse,

and the instruments in and practice of land governance. These are ‘regulate to facilitate’,

‘regulate to mitigate negative impacts and maximize opportunities’, and ‘regulate to block

and rollback’ land grabbing. Future trajectories in land grabbing and its governance will be

shaped partly by the balance of state and social forces within and between these three

political tendencies. Given this an unfolding global development, this article offers a

preliminary analysis by mapping under-explored areas of inquiry and puts forward initial

ways of questioning, rather than firm arguments based on complete empirical material.

Keywords: land grabbing, large-scale land acquisitions, flex crops, governance, Committee on

World Food Security, voluntary guidelines

Introduction: Changed Context for Global Land Governance

Reports of land grabbing from various parts of the world continue to come in. Media, inter-

national organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) remain the main sources

Correspondence Address: Chunyu Wang, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China. Email: [email protected]

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

Globalizations, 2013

Vol. 10, No. 1, 161–179, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2013.764152

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of these reports. Estimates of the extent of land grabbing vary. There is no consensus as to how

much land has been changing hands and on the methodologies of identifying, counting, and

quantifying land grabs (see Margulis et al., 2013, pp. 1–23). But there is a consensus that

land grabbing is underway and that is significant (White et al., 2012). Land grabbing occurs

in Africa (Cotula, 2012), but also in the former Soviet Union and Central Asia (Visser and

Spoor, 2011), Latin America (Borras et al., 2012a), and Asia. There are at least three important

ways in which land grabbing manifests today. Grabbing land for purposes of using it as a factor

of agricultural production to produce food, feed, biofuels, and other industrial products is prob-

ably the most common type. In addition, there is the emergence of ‘green grabbing’—land grab-

bing for environmental ends (Fairhead et al., 2012). Water grabbing is another important

dimension of contemporary land grabbing (Kay and Franco, 2012; Mehta et al., 2012; Wood-

house, 2012). The latter two require grabbing land in order to secure the resources they covet.

Global land grabbing is partly associated with the rise of what we call ‘flex crops and com-

modities’: crops and commodities with multiple and flexible uses—across food, feed, and fuel

complexes and industrial commodities (think of corn which is eaten fresh, frozen, or canned;

used to produce industrial sweeteners such as high-fructose syrup; processed into animal

feed; and milled to produce ethanol, which is blended with conventional gasoline to fuel

vehicles; and so on). These crops are produced in tropical and temperate countries, partly result-

ing in the rise of interest in land in both the South and North. Flex crops and commodities have

implications on global governance as a single crop/commodity straddles multiple commodity

sectors (food, feed, fuel, other industrial commodities), geographic spaces (e.g. North–

South), and international political economy categories (e.g. OECD countries, non-OECD

countries). The four currently most popular flex crops are maize, oil palm, soybean, and sugar-

cane. The increases in global aggregate production in terms of quantity and area harvested have

been significant during the past 50 years, with greater increases during the past two decades.

Many large-scale land investments are located in the flex crop and commodity sector.

Meanwhile, another sector where global land grabbing is implicated in is the fast-growing tree

plantations. It is in a lot of ways a kind of ‘flex crop/commodity’—these are trees and forests

with multiple and flexible uses, the emergence of which is traceable to the same changes in

the global political economy that ushered in the rise of flex crops. Tree plantations can be

used for timber extraction for industrial purposes destined especially to the BRICS. But the

same plantation can be anticipated for possible rise in wood chips-based biofuel complex,

while at the same time it can be used to speculate on carbon offset schemes such as Reducing

Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). During the past decade,

the rise in popularity of this sector, and the land use implication it has brought with it, has

been observable. The sector is likely to expand even more in the coming time (see Kroger,

2012, 2013).

There is thus a significant change in the global political-economic context that has given rise

to flex agricultural commodities (food and non-food) that are associated with the current land

grabbing. The character of these political economic changes is relevant in understanding

global governance of land grabbing.

The phenomenon of land grabbing has forced some national governments to pass laws and

policies in order to regulate land deals, with varying initial outcomes. For example, several

Southern American countries have tried to prohibit or control the ‘foreignization’ of land own-

ership, yet large-scale land deals remain widespread in this part of Latin America (Borras et al.,

2012a, 2012b; Murmis and Murmis, 2012; Perrone, 2013, pp. 205–209; Urioste 2012; Wilkin-

son et al., 2012). Because of the international dimension of land grabbing, there has been

162 S.M. Borras et al.

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increasing pressure for specifically global governance instruments to tackle the issue of land

grabbing. Initiatives have proliferated, ranging from corporate self-regulation mechanisms

around ‘codes of conduct’ (see von Braun and Meinzen-Dick, 2009; but see Borras and

Franco, 2010, for an initial critique) to (inter)governmental measures, such as the FAO’s Volun-

tary Guidelines for the Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forest agreed to on 11 May

2012 (FAO, 2012).

Various state and social actors view land grabbing differently. Some look at it as opportunity,

others as threat. This has led to what we identify as three competing political tendencies among

state and non-state actors with regard to global governance of land grabbing: first is regulate in

order facilitate land deals, second is regulate in order to mitigate adverse impacts and maximize

opportunities of land deals, and third is regulate to stop and rollback land deals.

This article offers a preliminary analysis touching on key elements in the changing global pol-

itical-economic context for land grabbing, including flex crops, food regime transition, and the

role of the state, as well as the rise of three competing political tendencies in emergent global

land governance. It maps under-explored areas of inquiry and offers initial ways of conceptua-

lizing and questioning global land grabbing, rather than firm arguments based on solid and com-

plete empirical material. The rest of the article is divided into two main parts: a discussion of the

changing global context for governance, and an analysis of the three competing political ten-

dencies. We end with a short conclusion.

Changing Food Regime, Flex Crops/Commodities, and the Role of National States

Recent changes in the global context relevant to global land grabbing have rendered existing

international governance instruments such as those by FAO (various voluntary guidelines),

Human Rights Council (human rights conventions), International Labour Organization (ILO),

among others (see Edelman and Carwil, 2011; Monsalve Suarez, forthcoming; Sawyer and

Gomez, 2008), including corporate self-regulation instruments useful to contemporary debates

around land grabbing, but probably in a limited way. It is important to examine these inter-

national governance instruments within the context of pre-existing structural and institutional

conditions and trends including the ongoing fluid transition towards a ‘polycentric’ food

regime, the rise of flex crops and commodities, and the (changing) role of national states—

and their implications for global governance of land grabbing.

A Fluid Transition Towards a Polycentric Food Regime?

Food regime is a powerful analytical framework developed by Harriet Friedmann and Philip

McMichael (1989). An international food regime is the set of formal and informal rules that

govern the production, distribution, and consumption of food on a world scale, embedded

within the development of global capitalism. It is thus a huge concept covering a wide range

of issues. For the purpose of this article, we are concerned with only a small aspect of food

regime, and this is about the state anchoring these regimes in terms of rule-making.

In terms of institutional power holder, the food regimes that existed were first anchored by the

British Empire starting in the 1870s and lasted until the eve of World War I. Food was inserted

into global capitalist development by having colonial and settler economies produce cheap

grains and meat via extensive agriculture and for export to the centers of capital in Europe to

feed the working classes. The second food regime, which started in the 1930s and lasted until

the early 1970s, was anchored by the United States (US). Chemical-based and mechanized

The Challenge of Global Governance of Land Grabbing 163

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agriculture produced food surpluses in the US and dumped them in developing countries largely

through food aid, partly feeding working classes in these countries with cheap food (McMichael,

2009). There is no consensus among key scholars on whether there is a third regime, and if so,

what it is and what is the power and institutional anchor, although they tend to agree that power-

ful transnational corporations (TNCs) tend to rule the regime in a neoliberal context

(McMichael, 2012).

What we have witnessed recently seems to be the emergence of new players wanting to gain

power in terms of reshaping international rules that govern the production, distribution, and con-

sumption of food and other closely related commodities embedded within the ongoing reconfi-

guration of key hubs of global capital. These powerful actors seem to be seeking ‘regime

change’. Key actors in this context are BRICS countries, some powerful middle-income

countries (MICs) and OECD countries (e.g. South Korea), and the Gulf states (see Lee and

Muller, 2012; McMichael, 2012; Margulis and Porter, 2013, pp. 65–86; Woertz, 2013, pp.

87–104). There is a trend showing the increases in these countries’ share in the production, dis-

tribution, and consumption of food and closely related commodities. Meanwhile, some powerful

MICs, such as Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, have

posted similar trends in terms of their share in the production, distribution, and consumption

of these commodities. This means that BRICS, collectively, are no longer just massive impor-

ter/consumer countries; at the same time, they are important producers of these key commod-

ities. In this process, the states in these countries seem to be trying to reshape the international

rules in the production, distribution, and consumption of food and related commodities. Many of

these countries are trying to decrease their reliance on the North Atlantic power holders (via

TNCs) for their food security, nor are the latter able to demonstrate continuing ability to

wage hegemonic control over the food regime. Thus, we see increasing instances where the chal-

lengers to the regime try to secure footholds in the production of food and other agricultural

commodities in distant territories (McMichael, 2012; see also Akram Lodhi, 2012).

This does not mean that the emergence of challengers to the traditionally North Atlantic-based

food regime has marginalized the conventional power holders. Europe and the US remain key

players in the global food systems and in the dynamics of regime rule-making. Especially in

light of the financialization of (agricultural) production, North Atlantic-based finance capital

has been increasingly involved in land deals. The fluid transition to what seems to be an emer-

ging polycentric regime cautions us from either remaining fixated on the traditional imperialist

powers or from getting overly obsessed of the new regime rule-makers (of China especially).

Whether these changes are going to lead to a full and stable regime remains to be seen. The

transformation is dynamic and fluid for the time being. The fluidity of the transformation

process, as well as the plurality, diversity, and distinct character of new key players, have

made global governance more complicated than what existed in the past. For instance, how

do we make US-headquartered pension funds accountable for the implications of their land

investments? Civil society organizations (CSOs) and their transnational advocacy campaigns

have been key to state–society interactions on global governance. However, historically they

were used to interact with international institutions that have something to do with the North

Atlantic powers and other key OECD countries. How are they going to interact with new

players such as China, India, Gulf States, Vietnam, and others that are not the usual players

in the transnational state–civil society interaction terrain, and with which there are no prior

channels and patterns of interaction?

Initial scanning of the global political terrain tells us that there are no answers to these ques-

tions that are readily available to CSO campaigners, one of the key players in the global


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governance scene.1 In our experience, CSOs have been trying to hard to implicate North Atlan-

tic-based countries and companies to land grabbing, but find fewer cases that directly implicate

these to land grabbing as compared to those that directly link China, India, South Korea, Brazil,

South Africa and the Gulf states. There are three key issues that are potentially important to CSO

campaigners to link, directly and indirectly, North Atlantic-based countries and companies to

land grabs: (1) the US and European biofuel policy; (2) financialization of agriculture that

involves finance capital that originates from and/or based in this region; and (3) green grabbing

linked to North Atlantic-brokered or -influenced international climate change mitigation policies

(carbon sequestration etc.) (Fairhead et al., 2012). (Inter)state–civil society interactions invol-

ving traditional key players are likely to revolve around these land grabbing subthemes.

But the emergence of BRICS countries, MICs, and the Gulf states as key players in food

regime rule-making dynamics has rendered the traditional repertoire of international campaign-

ing by CSOs inadequate in many ways, partly because there are no existing channels and rules of

institutional interactions between them. It is not only that CSOs do not know how to deal with

states like the Gulf states, it is also the other way around. As Woertz (2013, this volume)

explains: ‘Gulf states are ill prepared to engage with [CSOs]’. This situation is likely to make

multilateral institutional spaces such as the UN and regional intergovernmental bodies such

as the African Union, ASEAN, and the UN even more relevant to CSO campaigns (see

McKeon, 2010, 2013, pp. 105–122). CSOs’ interest and commitment to the Voluntary Guide-

lines process partly demonstrates this (refer to an initial discussion by McKeon, 2013, this

volume, on the dynamics of negotiation process around the guidelines). Whether these spaces

will be adequate and appropriate to tackle the issue of land grabbing is another matter, and

requires careful empirical investigation.

The Rise of Flex Crops and Commodities

The BRICS countries have significant and increasing share in the world’s total production of

four flex crops (see Figure 1). If we bring in MICs into the mix, then Indonesia and Malaysia,

together, corner the majority share in the production of palm oil worldwide. The BRICS

countries have large economies—home to 43% of the world’s population and have 26.3% of

world’s total agricultural land (FAOSTAT, 2010)—and as such constitute large markets for

flex crops and commodities, as shown in Figure 2, which is the aggregated import data.2

Some MICs are also important producers and exporters of flex crops and commodities, e.g.

Argentina for soya, Malaysia and Indonesia as world’s biggest exporters of palm oil, Vietnam

for fast-growing trees and products, and so on. A trend to watch is the increasing intra-

BRICS/MICs flex crop/commodity trade, and its implications for global agrarian transformation

more generally.

The rise of flex crops and commodities has far-reaching and complicated implications for

global governance. For one, there is a blurring of sectoral boundaries and sectoral governance

instruments. Transnational governance mechanisms are generally structured by sector or

theme, namely, food, feed, energy/fuel, forestry, climate change mitigation strategies, and so

on. How then can one categorize soya that falls within three categories of food, feed, and

energy/fuel, and which sectoral rules apply? How can one categorize palm oil that falls

under the categories of food, fuel, industrial goods, and which sectoral rules apply? As a conse-

quence, there is a complication in terms of framing a particular issue and policy advocacy cam-

paign especially for CSOs. It fragments the political space and makes single-issue focus

advocacy campaigns more difficult.3


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As mentioned earlier, when a CSO launches a campaign for biofuels-related governance

around palm oil it is easy for oil palm industry players to claim that theirs has nothing to do

with biofuels as it has to do more with food products (e.g. cooking oil) or other industrial com-

modities (e.g. shampoo), as the usual debate around Indonesian palm oil goes (White and Das-

gupta, 2010). Indeed while oil palm plantation expansion has been inspired by market expansion

of biofuels in the European Union (McCarthy, 2010), the immediate production in Indonesia

remains largely for non-biofuel markets. Hence, it weakens policy advocacy campaigns by

many CSOs using biofuels as an anchor issue.

This is even more complicated when we extend the issue to ‘indirect land use change’ (ILUC)

in a global context. When rapeseed in Europe, which was previously used for food industry, was

converted to feedstock for domestic biodiesel production, a substitute for the previous use was

necessary: thus importing palm oil from Asia (Franco et al., 2010). It becomes more difficult for

CSOs to directly pin down imported palm oil for the food sector as linked to biofuels (see also

Fortin and Richardson, 2013, pp. 141–159). There is a similar complexity in other flex crops/commodities: corn, soya, sugarcane, and industrial trees.

One implication of the flex crop/commodity phenomenon is the complexity in understanding

land grabbing. Observers tend to simplify data on land grabbing and the contexts for this

phenomenon. An example is the claim by the International Land Coalition (ILC) that 60% of

grabbed lands are devoted to biofuels (Anseeuw et al., 2011). Such an inaccurate reading

may inadvertently lead to problematic propositions for policy reforms or demand framing in

transnational policy advocacy campaigns. This is even more complicated if we bring in the

concept of flex trees and forests and the various possibilities in it: forests are captured, some

are planted with fast-growing trees: when there is a good market for timber products, timber pro-

ducts are produced and sold; if and when wood chips as feedstock to biofuel are required, biofuel

Figure 2. BRICS’s share in selected flex crop imports, world total (%). Source: FAOSTAT (2010)

Figure 1. BRICS’s share in selected flex crop production, world total (%). Source: FAOSTAT (2010).


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feedstock these become; when REDD+ contracts are speculated, these tree plantations can be

converted into conservation sites for cross-border carbon offset deals.

Key Role of National States

In our analysis of various country cases of land grabbing, we realize that national states are

engaged in systematic policy and administrative initiatives aimed at capturing so-called ‘mar-

ginal lands’ for large-scale investments. The role of the state in facilitating land investments

in these spaces includes some, or all, or a combination of the following: (1) ‘invention/justifica-

tion’ of the need for large-scale land investments; (2) ‘definition, reclassification and quantifi-

cation’ of what is ‘marginal, under-utilized and empty’ lands; (3) ‘identification’ of these

particular types of land; (5) ‘acquisition/appropriation’ of these lands; and (5) ‘reallocation/dis-

position’ of these lands to investors. Only national states have the absolute authority to carry out

these key legal-administrative steps to facilitate land deals. Most of these lands are within the

legal-administrative-military control of national states. In some cases, coercion and violence

have accompanied a state’s effort at territorialization, enforcement of its sovereignty and auth-

ority, as well as its promotion of private capital accumulation (Grajales, 2011).

Stepping back, and looking at the big picture, there emerge three broadly distinct but inter-

linked areas of state actions that enable states to facilitate land grabs, namely, (1) state simpli-

fication process; (2) assertion of sovereignty and authority over territory; and (3) coercion

through police and (para)military force to enforce compliance, extend territorialization, and

broker for private capital accumulation. First, in order to administer and govern, states

engage in a simplification process to render complex social processes legible to the state. The

creation of cadastres, land records, and titles are attempts to simplify land-based social relations

that are otherwise too complex for state administration (Scott, 1998). This requires the state’s

official powers to record land relations and (re)classifying lands. This in turn brings us back

to the notion of ‘available marginal, empty lands’. The trend in state discourse around land

grabs seems to be: if the land is not formally privatized, then it is state-owned; if an official

census did not show significant formal settlements, then these are empty lands, if the same offi-

cial census did not show significant farm production activities, then these are unused lands.

Second, beyond the economic benefits of land investment, land deals are also viewed as an

essential component of state-building processes where sovereignty and authority are extended

to previously ‘non-state spaces’ (ibid.). Third, coercion and violence usually with the use of

police and (para)military to enforce compliance with the state simplification project and the

broader state-building process have accompanied some of the land deals in various parts of

the world (see, e.g. Grajales, 2011, on Colombia; Woods, 2011 on Burma; Peluso and Lund,

2011, more generally).

This threefold state role in land deals is carried out to a large extent on behalf of the dominant

classes of capital, foreign or domestic. However, as Fox (1993) explains, the state’s support for

the capital accumulation process is always accompanied by the other task of the state to maintain

a minimum level of political legitimacy. This makes capital accumulation and political legitimi-

zation inherently interlinked and contradictory, tension-filled, uneven, and contested, across

space and time. The crucial role of national states in land grabbing has rendered attempts at

the international governance of land grabbing a complicated undertaking. It will be a challenge

for intergovernmental institutions to make these national governments responsive to inter-

national rules. This is doubly complicated in settings marked by ‘land grabbed land grabbers’,

i.e. countries where land grabbing occurs, but where some land grabbers in other countries also


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originate. Brazil is a good example. The Brazilian state was quick to move to regulate foreign

ownership of land in Brazil in response to popular sentiment against it, but at the same time

it is actively supporting Brazilian companies grabbing lands in other countries such as

Bolivia, Paraguay, and Mozambique (Galeano, 2012; Sauer and Leite Pereira, 2012; Urioste

2012; Wilkinson et al., 2012).

In short, the rise of flex crops and commodities within an ongoing fluid food regime transition,

the rise of BRICS and MICs, and the revalued role of central states are the critical context for

global land grabbing. While some may see this global restructuring as an opportunity, others

may see it as a threat. This has led to the emergence of three political tendencies, each of

which seeks to influence the nature, pace, and trajectory of global governance. We examine

these three tendencies in detail in the next section.

Competing Tendencies in Global Governance of Land Deals

It is difficult to find any individual or institution engaged in the issue of land grabbing today that

does not raise the issue of governance (for definitional discussion of global governance, refer to

Margulis et al, 2013, this volume). Many of the contentious themes in current land grabbing are

in fact governance-related, such as the Washington-based International Food Policy Research

Institute’s (IFPRI) early advocacy for ‘codes of conduct’ (von Braun and Meinzen-Dick,

2009), the World Bank’s ‘principles for responsible agricultural investments’ (PRAI), the

FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines, advocacy for transparency in land investments, issues around

community consultations (Vermeulen and Cotula, 2010), issues about contents of land deal con-

tracts (Cotula, 2011), advocacy for a set of minimum human rights principles to address land

grabbing (Claeys and Vanloqueren, 2013, pp. 193–198; De Schutter, 2011; Kunnemann and

Monsalve Suarez, 2013, pp. 123–139), calls to stop land grabbing by La Via Campesina and

allies (Via Campesina, 2012), among others. There is a plurality of initiatives around and pos-

itions on the issue of governance of land grabbing. The differences between these positions can

be significant, their political implications far-reaching.

Examining closely the emerging literature on land grabbing (i.e. academic, policy, and CSO

activist materials) and observing the various unfolding policy and political processes,4 we have

come to an initial observation that the dynamic (re)positioning done by multiple (inter)state and

non-state actors in terms of transnational governance of land grabbing seems to fall under three

discernible political tendencies. These tendencies are not sharply defined and fixed, hence the

use of the term ‘tendency’, and each is in turn internally variegated. The three tendencies are:

(a) regulate to facilitate land deals; (b) regulate to mitigate negative impacts and maximize

opportunities; and (c) regulate to stop and rollback land grabbing. These three tendencies

have provenance in recent alignment of forces in at least two important agrarian fronts. The

first was the political contestations around the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiation

in the 1990s. We saw more or less the same type of political groupings and trajectories: anti-

WTO led by Via Campesina, pro-WTO led by neoliberal ideologues, and a huge grouping some-

where in between with some closer to the latter, others to the former, such as the now defunct

International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP). This has been examined by Desmar-

ais (2007) and by Borras et al. (2008). The second was the emerging realignment of social forces

among diverse food movements. Holt-Gimenez and Shattuck (2011) have examined the various

groupings and political trajectories of these movements, and have identified more or less the

same three broad trajectories, and they have identified nuances within each camp such as

those between food justice and food sovereignty movements. More broadly, these political


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contestations are extensions of ideological struggles over the notion of ‘development’, and as

such link back to relevant historical debates depending on one’s particular academic discipline.

Coming back to our present three political tendencies: these trajectories are in turn embedded

within the changing global context we discussed above: the rise of BRICS and MICs, rise of flex

crops/commodities, and the repositioning of national states. The underlying ideological and

political bases for these positions are markedly different.

Regulate to Facilitate Land Deals

The first current is premised on the belief that interest in large-scale land deals is a desirable

phenomenon where states and the corporate sector have become interested in land (again)

(Deininger, 2011). The basis in pushing for this development offensive is the fundamental

assumption that there exist marginal, empty lands in the world (with an estimated area of some-

where between 445 million and 1.7 billion hectares) that can be made available to address the

multiple food–energy–financial–climate crises (World Bank, 2010). The anticipated positive

outcomes of land deals can be achieved when such deals are carried out well. It can be surmised

that part of the excitement in this camp can be linked back to the rise of flex crops (often also

referred to as ‘high value crops’) which in turn attract the interest of investors. Governance, in

this case, is based on two most fundamental assumptions in neoclassical and new institutional

economics: clear property rights and functioning of free market forces (Deininger, 2011).

Juergen Voegele, director of the Agricultural and Rural Development Department of the

World Bank explained that:

[W]hen done right, larger-scale farming can provide opportunities for poor countries with large agri-cultural sectors and ample endowments of land. To make the most of these opportunities, however,countries will need to better secure local land rights and improve land governance. Adopting an openand proactive approach to dealing with investors is also needed to ensure that investment contributesto broader development objectives. (World Bank, 2010, p. xv)

Governance tends to be seen from administrative and technical perspectives, for example, faster,

cheaper, and clearer land titling. The concept of transparent land transaction builds primarily on

mainstream economics’ concern about efficiency and functioning of free market forces. Hence

their call for strengthened property rights, environmental and labor standards, greater commu-

nity consultation, and the use of some international governance instruments such as transparency

mechanisms in land deals (e.g. free, prior, informed consent) (Deininger, 2011) is meant to

facilitate capital accumulation within an efficient institutional context. This too links back to

the context we discussed above: the changing role of the state. Here, mainstream economists

who do not usually like the state coming into the picture are calling the state back in to facilitate

the identification, quantification, acquisition, and disposition of so-called available marginal

lands. In a way, this tendency is one of strategic thinking: overall, renewed large-scale land

investment is good, and while some collateral damage may occur this can be tactically addressed

by deploying a variety of ‘good’ governance instruments.

Regulate to Mitigate Negative Impacts and Maximize Opportunities

The second tendency around the position of mitigating negative impacts while harnessing oppor-

tunities is based on the twin assumptions of the ‘inevitability’ of large-scale land deals and the

‘impossibility’ of redistributive land and rural development policies to promote small-scale


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farming-based development. The assumed ‘inevitability’ of land grabbing promotes a ‘genie is

out of the bottle’ kind of argument—and so, we must live with it. The ‘win–win–win’ position’s

basis and justification are captured in IFPRI’s earlier explanation (von Braun and Meinzen-Dick,

2009, p. 2): ‘Because of the urgent need for greater development in rural areas and the fiscal

inability of the developing-country governments to provide the necessary infusion of capital,

large-scale land acquisitions can be seen as an opportunity for increased investment in agricul-

ture.’ This tendency also gravitates around the narrative that land deals are relatively a welcome

development in the midst of state neglect of the rural sectors. Key to this position is the idea of

linking small farmers to the corporate sector. This position is illustrated in the policy position by

IFAP (released before its demise in October 2010) on biofuels and land use debate:

The production of food and feed remains paramount for the farmers of IFAP; however, bio-

fuels represent a new market opportunity, help diversify risk and promote rural development. . . .

Recently, biofuels have been blamed for soaring prices. There are many factors behind the rise in

food prices, including supply shortages due to poor weather conditions . . . The proportion of

agricultural land given over to producing biofuels in the world is very small: 1 percent in

Brazil, 1 percent in Europe, 4 percent in the United States of America, and so biofuel production

is a marginal factor in the rise of food prices. The misconceptions about biofuels are important to

overcome for a farming community that has long suffered from low incomes. Bioenergy rep-

resents a good opportunity to boost rural economies and reduce poverty, provided this pro-

duction complies with sustainability criteria. Sustainable biofuel production by family

farmers is not a threat to food production. It is an opportunity to achieve profitability and to

revive rural communities. (IFAP quoted in FAO, 2008)

This tendency also deploys a number international governance instruments to support its pos-

ition: strengthened property rights to protect the land rights of people, environmental and labor

standards, greater community consultation, and particularly the use of transparency instruments

such as free, prior, informed consent. However, in contrast to the first current, which deploys

these instruments clearly to strategically advance land deals, the second tendency deploys

these governance instruments based on urgent tactical considerations: to mitigate negative

impacts and maximize opportunities. Regular reports and policy positions from Oxfam are

examples of this (see, e.g. Oxfam 2011, 2012). Explicitly and implicitly linked to the calculation

of risks and opportunities by CSOs campaigning within this tendency are the same risks and

opportunities brought about by flex crops/commodities, discussed earlier. The discussion on

regulation within this political tendency also links back to the changing role of the state. It is

clear here that the role of the state is identified as key in terms of mitigating risks and harnessing

opportunities: enforceable rules that prevent people getting expelled from their land, delivering

the promised jobs, and so on. This tendency is invested in global standards and ‘best practices’ to

provide benchmarks for what states should do.

The urgency of the ‘here and now’ situations in many localities that require immediate con-

crete solutions inspires and mobilizes groups and individuals around the second tendency. Thus,

in contrast to what seems to be the more strategic thinking underpinning the first tendency, this

second current is more tactical: it is principally concerned with what is happening now and what

can be done to protect poor people.

Regulate to Stop and Rollback

The third tendency is the ‘stop and rollback land grabbing’ position. The fundamental assump-

tion in this current is that the contemporary expansion of production for food, biofuels, feed, and


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others is not really meant to solve the world’s hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation,

but to further capital accumulation for the insatiable corporate hunger for profits. For this camp,

this process of capital accumulation advances a development model based on large-scale, fossil-

fuel based, industrial, monocrop plantations that expels people from their land and degrades the

environment. This camp’s starting point is a stand against capitalism, often bringing in a strong

anti-imperialist and anti-neocolonial dimension in its position. It sees the rise of flex crops more

from a ‘threat’ perspective. In stark contrast to the IFAP position on biofuels, the transnational

agrarian movement La Via Campesina declared:

The current massive wave of investment in energy production based on cultivating and industrialprocessing of . . . corn, soy, palm oil, sugar cane, canola, etc., will neither solve the climate crisisnor the energy crisis. It creates a new and very serious threat to food production by small farmersand to the attainment of food sovereignty for the world population. It is claimed that agrofuelswill help fight climate change. In reality, the opposite is true . . . If we take into account thewhole cycle of production, transformation, distribution of agrofuels, they do not produce less green-house gases than fossil fuels, except in some cases. Meanwhile, the social and ecological impacts ofagrofuel development will be devastating . . . They drive family farmers, men and women, off theirland. It is estimated that five million farmers have been expelled from their land to create space formonocultures in Indonesia, five million in Brazil, four million in Colombia . . . (Via Campesina,2008)

Like the first two tendencies, this third current takes on board similar international governance

instruments: property rights for the people (although not limited to Western private property

ideas, to include communal and community property regimes), environmental standards, com-

munity consultations, and transparency instruments, such as free, prior, informed consent. It

links back again to our discussion earlier about the changing role of the state, although in this

case it is quite clear that the appeal is for the state to intervene more forcefully on behalf of

poor peasants. However, it is framed in a radically different way from the first two tendencies.

This third tendency deploys these international governance instruments in order to ‘expose and

oppose’, stop, and rollback land grabbing. The third tendency is captured by a statement of the

‘Global Alliance Against Land Grabbing’, which was convened by La Via Campesina and allies

in November 2011 in Mali. It says partly:

Land grabbing is a global phenomenon initiated by local and transnational elites, governments andmultinational companies in order to control the most precious resources in the world . . . [It] exceedsthe traditional North-South split that characterizes imperialist structures. Land grabbing displacesand dislocates communities, destroys local economies, cultures and the social fabric. It endangersthe identity of communities be they peasants, small-scale farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk,workers, indigenous peoples . . . Our land and identities are not for sale . . . There is no way to attenu-ate the impact of this economic model and of the power structures that defend it. Those who darestand up to defend their legitimate rights and survival of their families and communities arebeaten, imprisoned and killed . . . The struggle against land grabbing is a struggle against capitalism. . . (Via Campesina, 2012, pp. 21–22)

The third tendency is like the first tendency in that it is a strategic perspective, as if saying, ‘this

is not the kind of agriculture/development we want; another agriculture/development is poss-

ible.’ Hence, alongside its general call to stop and rollback land grabbing is their call for an

alternative, which in turn brings us to the currently most popular one: food sovereignty (see

Patel, 2009, for background).

The three tendencies are more or less stable analytical constructs, but key state and non-state

actors and their political stands are dynamic and constantly changing, often straddling two or

three tendencies depending on the particular configuration of issues and alliances, over time.


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This is partly because of the differentiated nature of relevant international/transnational actors;

they are not monolithic entities. For instance, it is not very useful to think of a single position on

global land grabbing within the World Bank, FAO, or IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural

Development). Sub-groups within these institutions may gravitate around a particular tendency,

and may also shuffle different positions over time. But for the time being, we argue that the

World Bank probably hosts many of those inclined towards the ‘regulate to facilitate’ tendency,

La Via Campesina and close allies represent the ‘regulate to stop and rollback’ position, while

many groups, NGOs (such as Oxfam), aid donors, international development agencies, and com-

munity organizations, may be inclined to various shades of the ‘regulate to mitigate negative

impacts and maximize opportunities’ tendency. Again, recall the earlier position of IFPRI.

These three tendencies are likely to compete with each other in their interpretations of key

international governance instruments, how to use these, and for what purposes—in some

ways similar to the political competitions around the WTO negotiations (Desmarais, 2007)

and the range of positions on the food question among food movements (Holt-Gimenez and

Shattuck, 2011). For example, all three tendencies identify community consultation and trans-

parency instruments (e.g. free, prior, and informed consent) as critical, but have three competing

interpretations and advocacies—all in support of their political positions. It is linked to how they

perceive what the role of the state should be. The process of competing interpretations is inher-

ently political and relational and is better understood from the (inter)state-(civil) society inter-

actions perspective rather than through technical and administrative lenses. Hence, it would

be wrong to look at the recently passed Voluntary Guidelines as a governance instrument that

has uniform and standard meaning to the three tendencies. As explained by Franco (2008),

once laws and policies are passed, they do not self-interpret or self-implement. It is the political

interaction of various state and non-state actors that will shape how the Voluntary Guidelines

will eventually be interpreted and implemented, from one setting to another (refer to

McKeon, 2013, this volume, on the discussion on the Voluntary Guidelines; and Seufert,

2013, pp. 181–186, for initial examination of this process). We should then expect at least

three versions of the actually existing Voluntary Guidelines and other global governance instru-

ments (e.g. transparency, human rights) in the coming years.

Political contestations around the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines will partly be

an extension of the political contestations during the negotiations. Underlying the tensions

during the negotiations was partly the ideological divide that underpins the three political ten-

dencies discussed here. Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) was a key coordinator

of CSOs working during the negotiations. In a brief, they raised the alarm and identified the fun-

damental source of tension:

With the support of Canada, Australia and the private sector, the USA insisted that economic growth,the strengthening of markets and investment are absolutely key to eradicate poverty. Thus, theyrefused—or tried to weaken—any policy measures beyond market mechanisms such as restitution,redistribution and the establishment of regulations guaranteeing security of tenure . . . in favor ofindigenous peoples, peasants, fishermen and women and nomadic pastoralists. (FIAN, 2011; empha-sis added)

Did the negotiations lead to a consensus on the ‘lowest common denominator’, which could

mean a set of Voluntary Guidelines that is not necessarily weak per se, but one that can be inter-

preted in many different ways? Most likely. BRICS countries were among those supporting the

Voluntary Guidelines during the negotiations. Again, at the height of the negotiations, FIAN’s

observation was illuminating:


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Particularly striking was the widespread hostility of states to recall their human rights obligationsrelated to land, fisheries and forests. Fearing that the Guidelines will create new obligations orbecome too prescriptive, many governments did all they can to weaken the language and the rec-ommendations of the Guidelines. For indigenous peoples this attitude is particularly worryingbecause the first draft of the Guidelines falls far behind the rights recognized in the UN Declarationon the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It took several hours of negotiation with Canada andthe USA to move them to accept in the text of the Guidelines the incorporation of the indigenouspeoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) as enshrined in UNDRIP! (Ibid.)

Meanwhile, there seem to be no major internal contradictions within the first current, save for

some unverified talks about tension within the World Bank between those who emphasize

‘investment’ and those who emphasize ‘regulation’ (probably underpinned by a purist neoclas-

sical versus reformist new institutional economics fault line). But there are major dilemmas

within and between the second and third tendencies. As mentioned earlier, the strength of the

second tendency is its grave concern, quite rightly so, about the ‘here and now’ issues (expulsion

of people from their land, shady land deals, and so on), placing them in a very good tactical pol-

itical and policy position and enabling them to maneuver in global policy spaces. No wonder this

is the most popular tendency of the three among key state and non-state actors at the inter-

national, national, and local levels. The potential pitfall of this tendency is, if and when it

loses strategic perspective, getting engaged from one specific tactical policy and political

battle to another, whether around specific land deals or around international policy instruments.

The best scenario for this political tendency then is to win many tactical battles—i.e. special

local land cases or specific governance instruments and processes—but in the end lose the stra-

tegic battle over development models.

The first two tendencies share several common features. If we take a closer look at the World

Bank’s position on governance of large-scale land deals and the role of key actors, we will

realize that it is cast in a generic way so that both ‘regulate to facilitate’ and ‘regulate to miti-

gate/maximize’ tendencies will be able to identify with it:

Responsible investors interested in the long-term viability of their investments realize that adherenceto a set of basic principles is in their interest; many have committed to doing so under a range ofinitiatives, including ones with a governance structure incorporating civil society and governments.

Civil society and local government can build critical links to local communities in three ways:

educating communities about effectively exercising theirs rights; assisting in the design, nego-

tiation, implementation, and monitoring of investment projects where requested; and acting as

watchdogs to critically review projects and publicize findings by holding governments and

investors accountable and providing inputs into country strategies.

International organizations can do more to support countries to maximize opportunities and

minimize risks . . . First, they can assist countries to integrate information and analysis on

large-scale acquisition into national strategies. Second, they can offer financial and technical

support for capacity building. Third, there is scope for supporting stakeholder convergence

around responsible agro-investment principles for all stakeholders than can be implemented

and monitored. Fourth, they can help establish and maintain mechanisms to disseminate infor-

mation and good practices on management of land acquisitions by incorporating experience and

lessons from existing multi-stakeholder initiatives (World Bank, 2010, p. xliv).

The logistically superior first political tendency and the popular second political tendency are

objectively allied. Both of them tend to emphasize procedural issues and corresponding govern-

ance to these. This can be seen in broad coalitions or initiatives that key players in both ten-

dencies are present in, such as the ILC, which is a coalition of international financial


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institutions such as the World Bank and IFAD, intergovernmental institutions such as the FAO,

NGOs such as Oxfam and the Asian NGO Coalition (ANGOC), funded by multilateral agencies

such as the World Bank and by bilateral development agencies, with an international secretariat

funded and housed by IFAD in Rome (see Borras and Franco, 2009, for background). The ILC’s

Tirana Declaration, for example, defines land grabbing mainly based on procedural questions.

They declared:

We denounce large-scale land grabbing . . . which we define as acquisitions or concessions that areone or more of the following: (i) in violation of human rights, particularly the equal rights of women;(ii) not based on free, prior and informed consent of the affected land-users; (iii) not based on athorough assessment, or are in disregard of social, economic and environmental impacts, includingthe way they are gendered; (iv) not based on transparent contracts that specify clear and bindingcommitments about activities, employment and benefits sharing, and; (v) not based on effectivedemocratic planning, independent oversight and meaningful participation (ILC, 2011, n.p.).

This is, arguably, not significantly different from the PRAI put forward by the World Bank or the

code of conduct initially proposed by IFPRI. If this type of global governance instrument con-

tinues to be the dominant objective of this dominant alliance, it is reasonable to expect that the

trend in and character of contemporary land grabs will continue, but that the manner in which

land deals are done may change: from non-transparent and non-consultative to transparent

and consultative land grabs—but land grabbing, just the same.

Meanwhile, the ‘stop and rollback’ tendency’s strength is its firm commitment to strategic

questions, treating the problematic within a framework of competing development models,

firmly rooted within an anti-capitalist stance. It stays away from too procedure-centered advo-

cacy work and emphasizes questions around substance and meaning of land deals. It is

focused on explaining why there is global land grabbing, why it should be opposed, and why

it is important to think of a strategic alternative. But what seems to be a serious limitation

with this tendency is what seems to be its weak tactical political positioning. It is relatively

less concerned and involved in tactical issues (local cases or governance instruments), in contrast

to the second current. For instance, it seems to be silent on and stays away from tactical issues

around labor standards in the emerging plantation enclaves, which is understandable as its analy-

sis of the problem and framing of alternative is small farm-centered. It seems to be lukewarm

toward some issues related to international governance instruments, such as transparency instru-

ments. These issues (labor standards, transparency instruments) are important mechanisms for

tactical mass mobilizations and campaigns. Defaulting on these issues is likely to result in

less than vibrant international campaigns to stop and rollback land grabbing because mass cam-

paigns usually need tactical foci and occasional tactical victories in order to agitate and mobilize

mass participants and sustain mass participation. Campaigns that are very strategic in nature,

advanced mainly via broadly cast issues and master frames may, at best, bring the issue onto

the official agendas and occasional news but are unlikely to push for substantial reforms (see

Keck and Sikkink, 1998, p. 201).

One dilemma in the context of global governance then is: if the ‘regulate to mitigate’ tendency

remains quite popular and influential but overly tactical in its work, while the ‘regulate to stop

and rollback’ tendency remains logistically weak (e.g. least funded among all groups campaign-

ing around land grabs) and relatively politically isolated with strategically framed campaigns

without much of a tactical component—in the context of the objectively allied first and

second political tendencies, then we are likely to see continuation of land grabbing and its legit-

imization in global rule-making, only with possible changes in the manner of how it is being

carried out. A transnational governance framework, or a transnational policy and political


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advocacy work that aspires to have substantial and procedural changes in the current large-scale

land investments is only likely when it is it is able to combine—and combine well—strategic and

tactical issues and political master frames and maneuver. This means an alliance, objective or

otherwise, between key actors in the second and third tendencies. Tension and conflict are

likely to mark such an alliance because of the differences in their histories, class bases, ideologi-

cal frameworks, and political perspectives.

Concluding Discussion

There have been important recent changes in the international political economy of agriculture

and the environment This transformation has partly led to the rise of new international players—

namely BRICS, some MICs, and the Gulf states—and alliances among them, the rise of flex

crops and commodities, as well as the repositioning of the central state as a key actor in the

development process. This has implications for international and national governance of land

grabbing. What we have done in the article is to identify emerging key issues in global govern-

ance of land grabbing, albeit in very preliminary manner.

We raised a number of important points in terms of changing context. First, there is a regime

transition, albeit still quite fluid, from North Atlantic-anchored global food regime towards a

more polycentric global food and agro-commodity regime where rules, rule-making, and rule-

makers are being contested and recast. Second is the blurring of boundaries between the

sectors of food, feed, energy, climate change mitigation strategies, finance, and industrial/com-

mercial complexes—and the subsequent blurring of governance boundaries between them,

resulting in, among others, a far more complex terrain for social movements and civil society

campaigners. Third is the complication in terms of area of jurisdiction and level of intervention

in terms of global governance amidst the repositioning of the central state as a key actor in con-

temporary land grabbing. This is complicated because of the dual contradictory task of the

central state in facilitating capital accumulation while maintaining a minimum level of political

legitimacy. In several countries, such as Brazil and Argentina, this is doubly complicated

because they are both the destination and the origin of land grabbers. What will international

governance instruments aimed at addressing land grabbing look like when these hit the national

political terrain of governance? This is one of the key empirical questions that needs to be

answered in the future.

The recent global agrarian transformations that shape and are reshaped by contemporary

global land grabbing have resulted in the emergence of competing interpretations of the

meaning of such dynamic changes, making the already complex terrain of global governance

around land grabbing even more complicated. What we have at the moment and what we are

likely to witness in the future is a three-way political battle to control the character, parameters,

and trajectory of discourse, as well as the instruments in and the practice of global governance of

land grabbing. This struggle is between the three tendencies, namely, ‘regulate to facilitate’,

‘regulate to mitigate negative impacts and maximize opportunities’, and ‘regulate to block

and rollback’ land grabbing. Each tendency has its own take on and interpretation of transna-

tional governance policies and instruments. In this context, the recently passed Voluntary Guide-

lines and global governance instruments such as transparency mechanisms and human rights

instruments (see, e.g. De Schutter, 2011; Edelman and Carwil, 2011; Monsalve Suarez, forth-

coming) will become both objects and arenas of this three-way political contestation. It is there-

fore not about the technical and administrative form of governance instruments that are crucial

especially since everyone endorses transparency, consultation, accountability, and the Voluntary


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Guidelines. The more crucial points are inherently political: the actual interpretation of the

meaning and the transformation into authoritative instruments of (inter)national governance

mechanisms to tackle the problem of land grabbing. Therefore, implementation will be an

even more contested and important site of struggle than the negotiations of the rules were.

Whether (trans)national agrarian movements and their allies will be able to mobilize, get con-

nected to the communities at the local land grab sites, and interpret and influence the Voluntary

Guidelines implementation and the use of various other global governance instruments such as

FPIC in the direction of their ideological stand remains to be seen. It will depend partly on how,

and how well, they are able to (re)frame their political actions around land grabbing to address

some disconnect between the changing context and the movements’ campaign master frames

that have in turn implications on how well they are able to influence the broader global govern-

ance of land grabbing. This can be seen in a number of examples: (1) Campaigns around oil palm

and land grabbing remain framed generally in the context of biofuels, which, as discussed

earlier, is a politically weak framing. (2) Land reform, which is a national governance instru-

ment, remains the main demand put forward in response to land grabbing. This is problematic

for a number of reasons, including the fact that many land grab sites involve lands that were pre-

viously redistributed to small farmers via land reforms, many land grabs occur in indigenous

peoples’ lands and their historic demand has never been land reform, and so on. Hence, land

reform as a master frame needs to be critically assessed (see Borras and Franco, 2012 for an

initial discussion of this). (3) International campaigns remain narrowly focused on conventional

principal targets: North Atlantic-based TNCs and governments, despite the more polycentric

character of the emerging food and agro-commodity regime. How to integrate BRICS and

MICs among the targets of campaigns and how to carry out policy advocacy campaigns in

this new global political-economic context remain among the most difficult of the challenges

confronting (trans)national agrarian, environmental, and human rights movements trying the

influence global governance of land grabbing.

Acknowledgements

We thank the three anonymous peer reviewers, Matias Margulis, and Nora McKeon for their

very critical but helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier rough draft of this article.

Notes

1 Based on participant-observation research by the authors.

2 Sugarcane is low most likely because of the fact that Brazil, India and South Africa are important producers of this

crop).

3 We thank one of the reviewers for suggesting to us to make our point on this more specific.

4 During the past four years, the authors have participated in UN Committee on World Food Security process, engaged

in various CSO activities around land grabbing, discussed with various national government officials, providing us

important insights that in turn led us to our framing of the three political tendencies.

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Saturnino M. Borras Jr. is Associate Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies

(ISS) in The Hague, a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Food First, and Adjunct

Professor at the College of Humanities and Development (COHD) of China Agricultural Univer-

sity (CAU) in Beijing. He is co-coordinator of the Land Deal Politics Initiatives (LDPI; www.iss.

nl/ldpi) which is an international network of academics doing research on global land grabbing.

He is co-editor, together with Marc Edelman and Cristobal Kay of the book Transnational

Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).

Chunyu Wang is Associate Professor at the College of Humanities and Development of China

Agricultural University in Beijing and was a China Scholarship Council postdoctoral fellow at

International Institute of Social Studies (2011–2012) when she carried out her research on land

grabbing and the politics of the negotiations on the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure in the

UN Committee for Food Security in Rome.

Jennifer C. Franco is coordinator of the Agrarian Justice Program of Transnational Institute

and Adjunct Professor at the College of Humanities and Development (COHD) of China Agri-

cultural University (CAU) in Beijing.


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http://www.iss.nl/ldpi

http://www.iss.nl/ldpi

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